marți, 23 iulie 2013

Welcome to the OCA Spotlight Series!

OCA Spotlights
highlight the career stories of alumni, who in their own ways, are working to
make an impact on the world. We hope that, through this program, you will find
ideas and encouragement for your own career journey, and will take the
opportunity to connect with alumni, who are generally happy to talk with
students and make connections themselves.

This interview
with Marian Stas first appeared as an OCA Spotlight in 2012. Marian, who
teaches at HKS each summer, met with OCA recently to update his interview and
to talk about how he is using what he learned at the Kennedy School to affect
deep, systemic change in his own country.

Says Marian,
"Don’t hold back from immersing yourselves fully into the transformational
process: you will have missed a lot otherwise. And seek out the meaningful
public value to which you can contribute, in the aftermath. It is easy to stand
on the sidelines and say what should be done. It is not easy to be the one to
do it."

[...]

Experience & Advice

Let me
illustrate my work during the last ten years mentioning three relevant projects
in line with this vision:

“Leaders
for the Third Millennium” – a youth leadership extra-curricular program
for high school students offered since 2002, now has over 10,000
graduates. This project was a “Trojan Horse” of sorts. I founded it
knowing that I wanted to transform education in the country. To get that
done I knew I needed to legitimize the conversation first and make myself
accepted (or, at least, not rejected) by the school system. The success of
this program helped me do that.

The
introduction of International Baccalaureate (IB) programs in the public
school system (this is work in progress since 2007: in 2009, “Barbu
Stirbei” National College in Calarasi became the first public school in
Romania out of about 8,000 in total, accredited by the IB Organization to
offer the Diploma Programme). I was, and am, the process facilitator for
getting this program going. I traveled to IBO headquarters in Geneva to
talk to people there. I talked to high schools, invited them to join the
process of application, and helped them get funding so that they could
apply.

Values-centered
curricular decentralization in pre-university schools (this, also, is a
work in progress since 2010. To me, this is the most critical process
towards the authentic transformation of the educational system). I initiated
the project. My argument is that there is almost no other voice talking
about alternative curriculum. Right now students take13-19 subjects each
semester. When you tell people there is a way for them to take eight
instead and to be more effective, they think immediately of work going
away and teachers losing their jobs, and that is where the conversation
stops. I see my role as making the vision part of the public conversation,
but doing that means introducing ideas drop by drop by drop and bit by bit.
There is tremendous inertia and the only way around that is to create
fertile ground and drop seeds.

Tell us about the journey you’ve taken to get to where you are.

I would best
describe my journey as an act of “social courage” (to quote one of my essential
readings: Rollo May’s “The Courage to Create”) and, again, I refer specifically
to creating meaningful public value. Besides the work briefly described
in my previous answer, teaching in the HKS Mid-Career MPS Summer Program since
2000 is a significant part of what I consider to be a meaningful contribution
to creating public value, which, to me, is transformational in its every single
moment of manifestation. Understanding the contexts in which I operate,
respecting the people I meet along my journey and learning from them are also
parts of the exercise of working on my own self.

I also have
worked believe it or not, in the military in Romania, where I found that the
best way to manage my career was simply to create new projects, hence, my next
job. For ten years I was the Chairman of the Board of an NGO. At some point I
realized that projects can become bigger than the organization and that
projects had to come first if I was to remain true to my vision.

[...]

What
about now? In 2013? What’s new and what’s been happening?

Marian
Stas being interviewed on TVR2 Romania

I believe we are near a tipping point. Most important is recognition of the
fact that the current state of affairs in education is totally obsolete.

A major role now is played by the media. I have done 10 to 15 shows in the
past year. I guest blog for one of the most well-read blogs in my country, the
name of which translates to “The Truth.” In the past six months I was invited
to write for them. I started writing and I became more mature in the
process, less afraid to speak out. This has made a huge difference.

About two months ago I said something that I think hit people like a punch
in the stomach. I said that our current education system was a security threat,
much more insidious that any military movement because this year’s inept
graduates may become our inept leaders in ten years."Since then
especially, people began reciting a mantra calling for change.

Another big thing that happened in the past year was that I spoke at a TEDx
conference. It became apparent then that I was speaking for a great many
people, who have not had the courage to say these things themselves. People
know the current system is unacceptable. I am not alone in thinking this. However,I
could say that I am one of the voices who airs a more articulated and
courageous account of their legitimate frustrations and feelings.

What role does your HKS experience play in helping you articulate your
vision and create action?

It is one thing to speak about your vision, but another to sell it. This is
the activist challenge: to make people aware that the old guard should go away;
it should die to make way for a new set of values.

I did a Skype interview recently and the Deputy Minister of Education saw
that and texted me and said she agreed that the paradigm we are in needs to
change. This is the first time something like this has happened. We are gaining
momentum.

But the time is right, too. This summer was marred by corruption in the baccalaureate
exam. It was a huge scandal, that significantly was being monitored by the
Romanian Intelligence Service—equivalent to the FBI in the United States. The
principal of a high school was arrested as a result. The fact that such a high
–level government agency took an interest in this case is an illustration of
how close we are to everything coming apart. This was just the tip of the
iceberg. It is proof that we are living with an outdated, inefficient system
that is rife with corruption.

What is your goal in all of this? Where do you think your work will lead
you?

I am not someone who needs recognition for what I’ve done. In fact, my
preference would be to write and engage society, to talk with teachers and to
get them out of denial and into the new world as it should be. I feel in this
way, I could better work to spread the movement.

Taking a leadership position with the government is less attractive for me,
but I would certainly do it if I were asked.

It is not easy to see someone else step in to take all the glory after you
have done so much work, but I learned at HKS to detach from the ego part of it,
from the need to be recognized. Because when it comes to transforming a country
that is not what matters. It goes beyond that to the ways you influence people
and create a process that makes far-reaching change possible.